Out of the corner of his eye, McElroy saw Warhol start to drift back towards the group. Standing with her back to him, kitten was oblivious to the approach. “We’re trying to turn portal-opening into a proper transportation system. We know that nephelim act as a sort of transponder, picking up my signals and repeating them back to me. Well, the scientists have built a beacon that can do the same thing. So, once those beacons are all over the place, we won’t need Nephelim at all on the receiving end. It’ll just be like dialling a telephone number. People’ll will come to a transit point here in Hell and then portal back to their desired point on Earth.”
“Just like the Yulupki Delivery Service, only without the need for Nephelim.” Dani cut in. “And you’re wrong Tucker, humans can’t just leave Hell now. It’s not just the rescue effort although that’s a big part of it. There’s so much here that we need. Oil, minerals, you name it. And then there’s the strategic part. An Army based in Hell dominates Earth, it can land anywhere it wants, go anywhere it wants. It’s the ultimate high ground. Also, a lot of First-Lifers don’t feel too good about what happened in the Curbstomp War. Have you seen the battlefield along the Phlegethon? Mile after mile of mangled daemon bodies. They tried to stop our tanks with bronze tridents. Hollywood’s already making films about that.”
“As well as new-wave horror films.” Warhol had decided it was time to get the conversation on to safer ground. “Have you seen the advertisements for Hellboy IV? ‘The first horror film made starring *real daemons*.’ That could start a trend you know.”
“It already has.” Dani grinned at the thought. “Did you hear the ACLU are suing the National Football League.? Apparently the Cubs recruited a couple of daemons for their offense and the other teams objected after they saw a daemon walking to the line with three or four humans hanging on to him. So the NFL made a ruling restricting the game to First-Life humans and the ACLU took umbrage. Called it racial discrimination. Big question here, does The Constitution apply to dead people?”
“Second-lifers.” McElroy made the point politely but firmly.
“Second-lifers. Sorry. Anyway, the question remains though and it’s a good one. Ted Kennedy’s interview a couple of days ago really raised that question. Can the dead, Second-lifers, vote?”
“Of course we can. Been doing it in Chicago for years.” McElroy inserted the barb with relish. It was, in his opinion, payback. Dani grinned acknowledgement.
“And if they can vote, why can’t they run for office? Puts a whole new slant on incumbrancy doesn’t it? If the dead can hold office, we will literally never get them out. Now that is a truly horrible thought.”
Training Camp, 1st Mechanized Infantry Battalion (Demonic), Dis, Hell
“We’re doing this the wrong way.” It was Ori speaking but he and Aeneas had discussed the issue at length and come to a satisfactory conclusion. That wasn’t surprising since they had started off in almost perfect agreement.
“What do you mean?” Sergeant Anderson would take any suggestion that offered hope at this point. The plan to produce units of daemonic troops was falling apart.
“We’re trying to make daemons fight using human tactics and methods. We can’t do it, nobody can. Their minds are set in a specific configuration by millennia of practice and we simply can’t change that. We have to adapt human strategy and tactics to daemonic abilities, not the other way around.”
Anderson tapped his fingers on the table. The idea sounded plausible but it ran against the whole concept of the 1st Demonic. That was to produce an army unit that was essentially similar to human forces but with daemonic personnel. One that could fit in with human units.
“What have you in mind?” His voice was cautious.
“The problem is that the daemons have no idea of unit coordination or mutual support. In a battle it’s every daemon for himself and forget about those left behind. No matter how hard we try, every time we begin an assault, it ends the same way. The daemons do a hell-for-leather charge and then the defenders cut them to pieces. They’re getting their minds around concepts like outflanking but covering fire and maneuver are beyond them.”
“I find that hard to believe.” General Schatten spoke from behind the trio, his approach unseen by any of them. “They’ve been fighting each other for millennia. They must have evolved concepts like outflanking.”
“Sir.” Sergeant Anderson had jumped to attention.
“Relax people. One of you explain to me what these problems are.”
“It is simply that daemonic units do not and will not cooperate. Aeneas’s time lecturing in universities had given him an insight into how to pitch arguments. Yes, they will outflank another unit if they can but setting up an outflanking move is beyond them. It means that one unit does the work of pinning down the target while another gets the glory of defeating it. It’s so deeply ingrained in them that they cannot behave any other way. We’ve tried everything. Short of shackling one unit in place that is. They just won’t do it. It’s made worse by the way their old units were structured. They were like our phalanx, once they were committed to a specific direction, they had to go straight forward. Now, we’ve got them to thin out and we’ve got them to lay down and shoot and that’s all very well but once the signal to advance, its ‘up boys and at’em’ and everything we’ve taught them goes out the window.”
“Think of them as armies from the 17th century.” Anderson added, “with tridents instead of pikemen and throwing lightning bolts instead of musket fire. Their traditional tactics were very much the same, they’d try and disrupt the enemy formation with lightning bolts and then close to win battles by the push of the pike.”
“Not really that dissimilar to how we fought.” Aeneas made the remark casually, unaware of how profound the insight really was.
“They form ranks, the front rank discharging their tridents and kneeling to recharge while the rank behind steps forward and does the same. Then the next rank does that. And so the whole formation advanced to contact. Then everybody used their tridents as thrusting weapons. That tactical concept really is the whole of their playbook. Or was, until we arrived.” Anderson sighed. “Breaking the habit of a lifetime is hard enough, but when that lifetime is millennia, there’s no chance. We can change the details of how they do things but the grand pattern is too well established to break up. We thought bringing Ori and Aeneas in would help because their tactical background was similar to that of the daemons but it hasn’t. We’re losing this battle Sir, we may have to give up on using daemonic units.”
“Not necessarily.” Ori spoke reflectively. He too had benefitted greatly from the time spent lecturing disbelieving historians on Japanese history.
“You have an idea?”
“Not us, specifically, but something we’ve heard on the wind. Caesar has cracked this problem with his legions.”
“He would.” Schatten sounded bitter.
Ori ignored the interjection. “As the stories go, he’s mixed humans and daemons in the same units. Daemons are the main body of troops, Second-Life humans run the support forces. Mortars, machine guns, artillery, armor and so on. In defense, the daemons lay down and fire their rifles along with everybody else. That much we’ve got them to do ourselves. When it comes to attacks, the daemons do the movement bit while the humans provide covering fire and artillery support. A daemonic charge supported by machine gun and artillery fire to pin down the opposition. In daemonic eyes, they’re getting all the glory, in human eyes, the daemons are taking the brunt of the casualties. Suits both.”